What are three to six key points or impressions that you will take away from these stories?

• Adverse childhood experiences are more common that people may realize and have lifelong consequences for people's physical and mental health and their success overall.
• Information about ACEs and trauma generally and its effects on health, behavior, and outcomes are becoming more mainstream. 
• Apparently, there's a serious problem with children being expelled from pre-K which just seems ignorant and unhelpful to me. Some of these programs are designed with preventing that problem in mind.

Write a 200-word reflection that engages, analyzes, critiques, expands upon, and/or questions what you read or listened to.

Overall, I'm glad to see that there are programs tackling the root of poor health outcomes. Given what we've known about trauma and abuse and its effects on the brain and epigenetic effects which can be passed down, there's no excuse to continue to use only band-aid approaches that treat the symptoms of adverse childhood experiences and rather than address the root.

The Guardian story, "Can people be saved from a terrible childhood?" mentions a therapeutic technique called Attachment and Biobehavioural Catch-up (ABC). While it does link to some information on the technique, I would have very much liked to have seen more discussion of the technique in the article in terms of how it's being used. It's always helpful to explain the approaches being used and the theories behind them as it helps people to gain a better understanding not just of the solutions but of the problem. When you discuss certain therapies and why they're used, it helps to highlight the factors that are really contributing to the poor outcomes for people. It can also help people better understand the weight of the problem by discussing the therapeutic challenges and depth that goes into working on these issues.

For the PBS story on Memphis's efforts to combat childhood trauma, I would have liked them to have utilized Robin Karr-Morse a little better. I had to look her up to learn that she has two books on this topic and is a family therapist and the former Director of Parents Training for the Oregon Child Welfare System. I feel like they could have made better use of her as a source and provided more information on her background and pointed people toward her books, even if just in passing. 

Share your reflections on your experience reading, watching or listening to the solutions journalism stories. Did you learn new information; gain new understanding; see things with a different perspective than you had in the past? Did the stories reinforce an idea or thought you'd previously had? Did you meet new people, or learn about opportunities you were previously unaware of?

These stories reinforced ideas I had already been aware of about the effects of trauma and abuse on health and outcomes. I'm excited to see so many programs working to tackle this issue at the root and that awareness of this is spreading. The PBS story spoke with Robin Karr-Morse and I've discovered she has two books on this topic - Ghosts from the Nursery and Scared Sick - which I'm adding to my reading list. 

Were there other stories this week that you’d like to give an “honorable mention” -- that you enjoyed, but were not your top choice to share?

"How One Colorado Town Is Tackling Suicide Prevention — Starting With The Kids" from NPR on the efforts of the Sources of Strength program in Grand Junction to prevent suicide was a bit difficult to listen to but an important story nonetheless. The program requires suicide prevention education and also makes use of peer mentors to attempt to combat the high suicide rates in the community.

What else would you like to share?

I would recommend anyone interested in these topics read Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky. Dr. Sapolsky is a Stanford professor and neuroendocrinologist whose work on stress, the brain, and behavior is helpful in understanding the science behind mental health. The book is a bit dense and well-sourced but Dr. Sapolsky has a very approachable writing style.